


Home

by canonjohnlock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Pre-Season/Series 01, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:16:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3712792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canonjohnlock/pseuds/canonjohnlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam never memorized street names, but he memorized the last words his father said to him before Sam left for Stanford.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> also available on wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/60497866-home

The word ‘home’ had a lot of different meanings for a lot of different people. Home was a place where you felt most comfortable. Home was the place you went to at the end of each day. Home was the people around you. For Sam, home was the endless stretch of road before him, the hatched white lines represented each place he had lived. And he had lived in a lot of places.

Highway exits were sometimes just pitstops for passerby. Sometimes they were the way home for residents. Sam was a passerby. He would drive onto the exit ramp with his dad and brother. He’d peek out of the back seat windows and watch as the town grew before him, fast food chains developing into suburban neighborhoods. Sam would go to the school the next day, sometimes in the same clothes he had worn for a week without change. Dean would drop him off at his classroom and introduce Sam to the teacher, pat him on the shoulder, and march off to his own room. Sam would stand duck-footed in front of his temporary classmates as the teacher introduced him. “Class, this is Sam Winchester. Give him a warm [insert school name here] welcome.” The class would mumble a response, usually incomprehensible and Sam would take an empty seat in the back. At the end of the day, Dean would come by again and take Sam’s hand and they’d walk back to the current motel they called ‘home.’ Sometimes the walk was short, others it required them to walk in ditches next to busy highways. By the time they got home, Sam would be too tired to actually do the assigned homework. Dean would tell him to suck it up and do it because school is important. So Sam would and Dean, instead of doing his homework, would make Sam dinner and then they’d curl up in the scratchy motel twin bed and sleep. 

After a few weeks in the town, sometimes a few days, and, if they were lucky, a month or so, their dad would return with new scars and bruises and another kill beneath his belt. The boys would pack up and the family would steal away in the middle of the night and Sam would watch as suburban neighborhoods shrunk to fast food chains and they would leave the town and move on to the next town at the next ramp. 

As Sam grew older, he noticed that most kids could identify places by the street names. “Basketball game on Pine Street, Winchester. Wanna come?” “Can you meet me at the Wal-Mart on Main?” “There was an accident on Groove Lane. Drove right past it this morning.” Sam would nod and agree sometimes and then he’d go home and look up the street names and wonder how in the hell kids remembered the street names. Then Dad would drag them to the text town or state and Sam would never learn the street names. 

He decided to replace memorized street names with memorized formulas or poems or numbers. He would try to memorize all the stars in a constellation or at least fifty digits of pi and he’d recite them proudly to Dean or anyone who would listen. He would recite poems by Whitman and Dickinson to his father who would grunt and tell him to “use that pea brain of yours to memorize somethin’ useful.” So Sam started memorizing facts about the monsters his father had hunted and killed. He memorized origin, appearance, hunting patterns, what killed them, and where they frequented. He would labor over clunky library desktops and squint at tiny lettering on websites that crashed all too often. He would check out books never to be returned and read them cover to cover over and over again until he had the content memorized. He became the walking encyclopedia of monster lore. He recited everything he knew about shifters to his dad and his dad would mumble, “Why ain’t you doin’ homework, Sammy?” And Sam would dejectedly sit down at the table in the motel of the week and finish his homework even if it didn’t matter because he’d be gone by morning. 

As Sam grew older still, he realized that there was more to being a normal kid than to memorizing street names and local football teams, but he’d still memorize useless facts. He abandoned his vigourous study of monsters and began researching the town’s history, the sports teams, which way the political party swung. He’d memorize all that but they’d leave the next day and his knowledge would be useless. Try as he might, he couldn’t be normal. He couldn’t memorize street names, only exit numbers; he couldn’t memorize football teams, only how many new scars his father came home with. 

So he gave up. He stopped bothering to memorize things and distanced himself from his classmates. He’d do his work and turn it in. He’d do what was required of him, no more, no less. When he reached seventh grade, he entered the school of the week during the middle of career week. He listened raptly to adults talk about what they did. And he realized he could have that. So he worked his ass off to get into college and when he was accepted and the letter appeared in the current PO box, he proudly showed Dean and waited until Dad got home to show him. 

“Look, Dad,” he said grinning. Only eighteen and he already towered over his father and brother. “I got a full ride to Stanford.”

“Okay,” was all his father said as he grabbed a beer. 

“School starts in the first week of September but I gotta get down there the last week of August to get my classes and dorm.” 

His dad finally looked at him, dumbfounded. “What?”

“I got accepted into college,” Sam repeated. 

His dad chuckled. “What’d you do that for?”

Sam felt like the air had been punched out of his lungs. “So I can become a lawyer, Dad.”

“You can’t go, Sammy. You got responsibilities here with your brother and I,” his dad explained, knees cracking as he sat down on the motel bed. 

Sam furrowed his brow and the letter hung limply in his hand. “I have a responsibility to myself, Dad.”

“Sam, you can’t go. End of discussion. Now pack your bags. We gotta go.”

“I’m going, Dad,” Sam protested, bracing for his father’s deadly rage. 

“What was that, Samuel Winchester?”

“I’m going to Stanford to study law. End of discussion.”

Dean watched wide-eyed from the other side of the room. His head whipped between his father and his brother watching as the battle unfolded. 

“I said no, Sam,” their dad repeated.

“I’m not staying.”

“Hell yes you are, Sam!” John shouted, rising to his feet. 

Sam crossed his arms over his chest and set his jaw. “You can’t stop me, Dad. I’m going and you can either accept it and let me go or not accept it and still, I’ll go. The ball’s in your court now.”

“Sam, you have a duty to me. To Dean. To your mother.”

Of course he would. Of course Dad would pull the mother card. Sam worried his lower lip. “You’ve spent the last eighteen years looking for the thing that killed her. Do you know you are full of shit?”

John was now turning a light shade of red as was Sam. “I am not full of shit.”

“You’re sick, Dad! Most widowers grieve for a while and then move on! It’s been eighteen years! Killing the thing won’t bring her back!”

“It brings justice!” John yelled. 

“To who?” Sam shouted. 

“Your mother!”

“Do you think she wanted this for Dean and I? Do you think she wanted us growing up in a thousand different motels? Do you think she wanted us going to a million different schools? Do you think she wanted us to grow up fearing the dark?”

“She wanted you guys safe!”

“And leaving us alone in motel rooms for weeks at a time is protecting us?”

“Don’t fight me on this, Sam.”

“Too late for that, Dad! I’m going. Like it or not, I’m going to college and you cannot stop me. I am a legal adult now.”

“Then get out! Now! Pack your bag and get on a bus and never come back! If you go, stay gone! You hear me!” John bellowed. 

Deadly silent, Sam said, “I hear you loud and clear.”

Sam packed his bag and walked out the door, leaving a broken and shattered family with a missing piece. As he stood in the rain at a dirty and rusted over bus stop, he realized he was leaving behind the only home he ever had. The only streets and football teams and other useless knowledge he always memorized all too late was behind him now. He had new streets to memorize, new teams to cheer for, new families to find. He almost went back. Almost. But the bus came and the driver propped open the door but Sam stood motionless until the bus driver yelled, “You gettin’ on kid?” And Sam said, “Yeah, yeah I am.” Yet he didn’t move. The driver yelled once again, “You alright?” And Sam frowned, turned his back on the only home he knew, and got on the bus and told the driver, “No, I’m really not.”


End file.
